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Zana Muhsen is fifteen and living in Birmingham, England, when her father takes her and her thirteen-year-old sister Nadia on what he calls a family holiday. The trip ends in rural Yemen, where both girls are forced into marriage.

The years that follow are spent in an isolated village with no running water. Zana describes physical abuse and giving birth with only local women to attend her. Confinement is the daily condition of both sisters' lives.

This is a first-person memoir, written by Zana with the ghostwriter Andrew Crofts and first published in 1991. It covers eight years in Yemen, ending when Zana escapes and returns to Britain. Nadia does not leave and stays behind.

The account is one sister's perspective. Nadia has since said in interviews that she did not want to leave Yemen, so the two sisters now describe these events differently. A sequel, A Promise to Nadia (2001), follows Zana's continuing campaign for her sister.